February 6, 2018

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“The impacts of climate change are already cliff edges occurring in micro-locations all over the world.

The whole notion that it’s at some distant future which is unknown to us quite how far it is—that’s just rubbish. If you look at coastal communities that are getting inundated right now, communities that were built on permafrost that are no longer stable in their substructure, all of those things are happening right now.”

Professor Hadi Dowlatabadi doesn’t mince words when it comes to his opinion of policy-makers who throw money at research rather than taking the known necessary steps to combat the problem of climate change. He believes that consequential climate change is measured locally, not globally, and any change in climate or atmospheric conditions in any community is unacceptable.

Professor Dowlatabadi is a Canada Research Chair in Applied Mathematics of Global Change with the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. His research is focused at the interface of nature, humans, technology and policy. Among his greatest accomplishments are leading the team that built the first successful models of climate change and policy at Carnegie Mellon and co-founding the nonprofit Offsetters Climate Neutral Society.

Professor Dowlatabadi joins Ross and Christophe to share his frustration with the lack of evidence-based policy employed by governments as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change temperature targets. He offers his insight on geoengineering, explaining why he is so confident in its inevitability. Professor Dowlatabadi speaks to the fossil fuel substitutions he finds most interesting and the issue of subsidizing the zero till practice. We debate the ‘unobtainable goals’ of Elon Musk and compare Nori with Professor Dowlatabadi’s 2005 Offsetters program. Listen in for Professor Dowlatabadi’s take on the cliff edge model, and learn why it is time to stop studying policy-level science and take action on climate change.